The basis of Cézanne’s art was his unique way of studying nature
in works such as Mont Sainte-Victoire (FIG. 31-20), one of many
views he painted of this mountain near his home in Aix-en-Provence.
His aim was not truth in appearance, especially not photographic
truth, nor was it the “truth” of Impressionism. Rather, he sought a last-
ing structure behind the formless and fleeting visual information the
eye absorbs. Instead of employing the Impressionists’ random ap-
proach when he was face-to-face with nature, Cézanne developed a
more analytical style. He sought to order the lines, planes, and colors
that comprised nature. He constantly and painstakingly checked his
painting against the part of the real scene—he called it the “motif ”—
he was studying at the moment. Cézanne wrote in March 1904 that his
goal was “[to do] Poussin over entirely from nature... in the open air,
with color and light, instead of one of those works imagined in a stu-
dio, where everything has the brown coloring of feeble daylight with-
out reflections from the sky and sun.”^13 He sought to achieve Poussin’s
effects of distance, depth, structure, and solidity not by using tradi-
tional perspective and chiaroscuro but by recording the color patterns
an optical analysis of nature provides.
With special care, Cézanne explored the properties of line,
plane, and color and their interrelationships. He studied the effect of
every kind of linear direction, the capacity of planes to create the
sensation of depth, the intrinsic qualities of color, and the power of
colors to modify the direction and depth of lines and planes. To cre-
ate the illusion of three-dimensional form and space, Cézanne fo-
cused on carefully selecting colors. He understood that the visual
properties—hue, saturation, and value—of different colors vary (see
“19th-Century Color Theory,” page 832). Cool colors tend to recede,
whereas warm ones advance. By applying to the canvas small patches
of juxtaposed colors, some advancing and some receding, Cézannecreated volume and depth in his works. On occasion, the artist de-
picted objects chiefly in one hue and achieved convincing solidity by
modulating the intensity (or saturation). At other times, he juxta-
posed contrasting colors—for example, green, yellow, and red—of
like saturation (usually in the middle range rather than the highest
intensity) to compose specific objects, such as fruit or bowls.
In Mont Sainte-Victoire,he replaced the transitory visual effects of
changing atmospheric conditions, effects that occupied Monet, with a
more concentrated, lengthier analysis of the colors in large lighted
spaces. The main space stretches out behind and beyond the canvas
plane and includes numerous small elements, such as roads, fields,
houses, and the viaduct at the far right, each seen from a slightly differ-
ent viewpoint. Above this shifting, receding perspective rises the largest
mass of all, the mountain, with an effect—achieved by equally stressing
background and foreground contours—of being simultaneously near
and far away. This portrayal approximates the real experience a person
has when viewing a landscape’s forms piecemeal. The relative propor-
tions of objects vary rather than being fixed by a strict one- or two-
point perspective, such as that normally found in a photograph.
Cézanne immobilized the shifting colors of Impressionism into an ar-
ray of clearly defined planes that compose the objects and spaces in his
scene. Describing his method in a letter to a fellow painter, he wrote:[T]reat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything
in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is
directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give
breadth... Lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But
nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need of
introducing into our light vibrations, represented by reds and yel-
lows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air.^14Post-Impressionism 83731-20Paul Cézanne,
Mont Sainte-Victoire,
1902–1904. Oil on canvas,
2 31 – 2 2 111 – 4 . Philadel-
phia Museum of Art, Phila-
delphia (The George W.
Elkins Collection).
In his landscapes, Cézanne
replaced the transitory visual
effects of changing atmo-
spheric conditions, a focus
for the Impressionists, with
careful analysis of the lines,
planes, and colors of nature.1 ft.31-20ACÉZANNE,
Large Bathers,
1906.